In many high-speed data applications, transmission over a single transmission line may be insufficient to provide the required bandwidth for communication of a signal. For example, communication bandwidth may be increased for such applications by combining bandwidth of a plurality of data lanes for communication of the signal. For instance, IEEE Std. 802.3ba describes a method of transmission over a plurality of lanes as a standardized technology for 100-Gbps Ethernet. The 100-Gbps Ethernet combines either ten 10-Gbps data lanes or four 25-Gbps data lanes to realize a bandwidth of 100-Gbps.
In different communication protocols, methods of multi-lane communication are defined by a physical coding sublayer (PCS) and a physical medium attachment (PMA) sublayer. The PCS/PMA sublayers perform a number of functions including delineation of Ethernet data frames, transport of fault information, clock recovery, and distributing data across multiple (merged) data lanes. The PCS/PMA sublayers also support reassembly of received data from multiple data lanes. In some protocols, the PCS/PMA sublayers are scalable and can be dynamically adjusted to merge different combinations of data lanes to form communication channels having different data widths, as required by a particular application. Such configurability allows the available data lanes to be more effectively allocated to achieve bandwidth required for different communication channels.